Fireworks
by AstraPerAspera
Summary: A gift for the SamJack Family at Gateworld in honor of the 5th Annual Ship Day: Sam and Jack spend the 4th of July together.


**FIREWORKS**

"You know, I could have gotten us _good_ seats…." Jack shifted position on the blanket and stretched out his legs, trying to get a kink out of his knees. "Something with an actual chair involved," he added with a grimace as the one knee, it seemed, refused to behave properly.

Sam shook her head and leaned back on her hands. She could feel the damp ground underneath the thin blanket they'd bought from one of the street vendors. It was one of those gaudy velour ones, deep navy with a blazing image of a bald eagle soaring over snow capped mountains emblazoned on it. Jack had grumbled but nevertheless handed over a twenty when she had pointed out that the storm that had emptied the Mall just hours before had probably left the ground pretty wet. Theirs was one of hundreds of similar islands of cloth and plastic spread out on the grass as far as the eye could see.

"Nope. This is just fine." Yeah. Jack probably could have scored good seats. Even front row ones, right under Eric Kunzel's nose and close enough to the first violins to see the hairs breaking on their bows during the 1812 Overture. But then they would have had to have been General and Mrs. O'Neill. And hanging out with the Pentagon brass was the last thing Sam wanted to do tonight. Her days earth-side were dwindling down to too precious few and she had no intention of spending a single one she didn't have to with anything remotely military. She just wanted to be one of the crowd, like hundreds of other couples, watching the jumbo screen and listening to the July 4th concert from the oversized speakers positioned around the mall. So what if she couldn't see Little Richard up close. She was here with Jack; they were together and that was all that mattered.

"You like this," he remarked. She turned to him. In the fading light she could see he'd been watching her, a slightly bemused look on his face.

"What?" she asked, not sure what was causing him to get That Look. The look he got when she did something that delighted him. The one that she'd never told him sent shivers down her spine. Shivers of the most pleasurable kind.

"Being normal."

Sam furrowed her brow in mock agitation.

"I am normal," she countered.

"You know what I mean," he answered back. "Doing normal stuff. Like this."

Sam sighed.

"Well, I don't think I'm going to get much of an opportunity to watch fireworks with my husband in the Pegasus Galaxy. At least not the good kind of fireworks."

She tried not to let her disappointment with her new assignment creep into her voice, but she knew how well Jack could read her, no matter how flippant she tried to be.

"Yeah," though, was all he said. Sam glanced at him again but he seemed to be quite absorbed in the rendition of _Cabaret_ that was being performed up on the all too distant stage. And she could read him well enough to know that there was a deep well of unspoken words lurking beneath that single one.

Damn. Sometimes she wished he would talk to her instead of keeping it all bottled up inside. Even after all this time she still hadn't figured out if it was because he couldn't bring himself to say the words or wouldn't. In the end, she decided, it didn't matter. The effect was the same. Taciturn Jack, dark-eyed with whatever it was he kept tamped down, his monosyllabic answers shouting at her.

"Don't," she pleaded. He looked at her sharply.

"Don't what?"

"Don't leave me like that. You go places, Jack. And you leave me behind."

He studied her for a moment even as the applause around them made hearing each other next to impossible. But she didn't need to hear him to understand the set of his jaw and the look of regret on his face.

"I will never leave you behind, Sam. I swear."

"Then talk to me."

"Here?"

"Here…home…anywhere. I don't care."

A wave of low chuckling rippled through the crowd. Someone on stage must have said something faintly amusing. Sam really didn't care, at the moment.

"Look…can we talk about this later? Or better yet…not talk about it?"

Sam shook her head in frustration. Typical Jack. Not that she needed him to actually say the words. She already knew what was up. He hated her assignment as much as she did. He was worried about her safety. Here they had just rid the galaxy of yet another major threat only to have her sent to an entirely different galaxy to help sort things out there. He was angry over the scuttlebutt that suggested he'd arranged this command for her. He was upset that she'd suggested that perhaps things might be better if he made his presence in Atlantis scarce for awhile, even if he understood why. He had missed her for the three months she'd been in Atlantis already and he was missing her now, even though she hadn't even left yet.

Sam sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder.

Who knew a guy could be so articulate without ever saying a word?

Jack's arm came around her, pulling her closer to him. The air was humid, but cool and the warmth of his body felt good. But then again, anytime she was next to him felt good. These past weeks had been too perfect for words. A weeklong conference, followed by a series of meetings at the Pentagon that necessitated her remaining in DC for another two weeks. Another week going over some R and D with the Asgard stuff that Landry had conveniently arranged to take place in Silver Springs before she had a whole month's leave. Eight weeks. It had been glorious. Almost…normal.

And it made returning to Atlantis that much more difficult. For both of them.

As if reading her thoughts, Jack pulled her even more tightly to him and kissed the top of her head. Looking up at him with a smile, it suddenly occurred to her that she really didn't want to be here after all. Not with the way he was looking at her this time, one eyebrow slightly raised in a silent question. There was no mistaking his intentions now. Sam grinned.

"You wanna…?" he jerked his head in the general direction of their home.

"Yeah…"

A few moments later the mountains and soaring eagle belonged to a family who'd been struggling to sit on a single torn-out rain poncho, and, guided by Jack's firm hold on her hand, they were picking their way through the crowd toward the nearest Metro station.

Forty-five minutes later, at the point of the crescendo where cannons boomed and hearts beat wildly, the fireworks began to explode in an array of colors so absolutely breathtaking that cries of ecstatic joy accompanied them.

And back on the Mall, the rest of the crowd enjoyed some very pretty explosions in the night sky too.


End file.
